The Bible is divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament writings took place before Jesus’s birth. The New Testament starts just before Jesus is born and covers His birth, his adult ministry and His death and resurrection and the acts of His followers. There are 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament for a total of 66 books.
At Meno we look at the Bible in 6 groups with a system called the ColorStudy™ method. These are not official subdivisions of the Bible, but a simple system to help make it easier to understand where you are in the Bible.
| Traditional Bible Divisions | Bible Books Included | Meno ColorStudy™ Method Divisions |
|---|---|---|
| Pentateuch | Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy | Orange ColorStud™ The Law (Leviticus and Deuteronomy) Red ColorStudy™ History (Genesis, Exodus, Numbers) |
| Historical Books | Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1Samuel, 2Samuel, 1Kings, 2Kings, 1Chronicles, 2Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther | Red ColorStudy™ History |
| Psalms | Psalms | Yellow ColorStudy™ Poetry & Prophecy |
| Wisdom Literature | Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs | Yellow ColorStudy™ Poetry & Prophecy |
| The Prophets (sometimes broken down further into major and minor prophets) | Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zachariah, Malachi | Yellow ColorStudy™ Poetry & Prophecy |
| The Gospels | Matthew, Mark, Luke, John | Green ColorStudy™ The Gospel |
| The Book of Acts | Acts | Green ColorStudy™ The Gospel |
| The Pauline Epistles | Romans, 1Corinthians, 2Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1Thessalonians, 2Thessalonians, 1Timothy, 2Timothy, Titus, Philemon | Blue ColorStudy™ Letters for Life |
| The General Epistles | Hebrews, James, 1Peter, 2Peter, 1John, 2John, 3John, Jude | Blue ColorStudy™ Letters for Life |
| The Book of Revelation | Revelation | Purple ColorStudy™ The End of This Age |
The short answer is that there are many faithful English translations of the Bible. By faithful, we mean that the translations are attempts to say in English what is said in the original languages of the Bible (ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek). We are blessed because some people in the world do not have any translations of the Bible in their native language.
Some common faithful translations are the New International Version (NIV), The English Standard Version (ESV), The King James Version (KJV), The New King James Version (NKJV) and the New American Standard Version (NASV). You can use the ColorStudy™ method with any faithful English translation.
Because the Bible was written in ancient Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek, different groups have taken the time to translate it so that people who do not know those languages are able to read the Bible. If you have ever studied another language, you know that there is often more than one way to translate something. For example saying “It’s raining really hard” or saying “it is raining cats and dogs” are two ways of saying the close to the same thing.
Some translations lean more toward a word for word translation. This means that they look for the best English word to approximate the word in the original language. Some translations work to translate thought for thought. This means they are less concerned with translating each word exactly, and more focused on accurately translating the meaning of the thought.
For example, if we were translating the Spanish phrase “de nada”. Thought for Thought we might say, “you’re welcome”. Word for word it means “of nothing.” So word for word is technically accurate, but may not always give us the closest meaning. Most faithful translations use a balance between both word for word translations and thought for thought.
Catholic Bibles contain the 66 books of the Protestant Bible plus Apocryphal Books. These are books that are not inspired by God, but provide historical information on the life of the people of Israel during the time period between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
Sometimes people compare the Bible to the children’s game of telephone. In the game, one child whispers a sentence into the ear of another. The second child then whispers into the ear of a third and so on until many children have whispered the message. By the time the message gets to the last child, the words are usually very different than how they started. Some people wonder, since we have copies, not originals of the Bible how do we know the words are even correct?
This is a good question. One thing that is different from the child’s game of telephone is that monks and scribes who took their responsibility very seriously, made copies of the originals by writing them down. They took great care to write carefully, knowing that these were very important words.
Add to that the fact that there are over 5,000 copies of New Testament transcripts. Since scribes and monks are human, they did make some mistakes but not in the same places. So by comparing the thousands of manuscripts together, scholars who study the Bible are able to discern which words were in the original.
So Bible textual criticism (the study of making sure the Bible is based on the original words) is not like the game of telephone. It’s more like scientists putting together the skeleton of a dinosaur with fossils. Even though they may not have pictures of the original, they can use the evidence they have, and compare with other specimens to create a finished work that we have confidence reflects the original.